United Airlines late Monday announced that it has reached a new tentative agreement outside of bankruptcy court with its mechanics, represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn. Terms of the five-year deal were not released, but it reportedly includes a 3.9% pay cut as well as reductions in sick time and holiday benefits and will save the carrier $96 million a year. United previously had sought $101 million from the group.
Rockwell Collins will provide service and support for Collins avionics on GoJet Airlines' CRJs. Under the 16-year Dispatch Plus agreement, Collins Aviation Services will supply spares ownership, MRO and technical support on a fixed-price-per-flight-hour basis. GoJet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trans States Holdings, is expected to take delivery of the first of 10 CRJ700s in June.
Thomas Cook Airlines UK plans to create two new engineering hubs at Glasgow and Birmingham. The company already maintains its own aircraft at Manchester, Stansted, Gatwick and Newcastle. "Our departures from Glasgow and Birmingham have grown considerably over the past few years and we felt it was the right time to take control of maintenance rather than subcontract this work," said Engineering Director Chris Hubbard. Thomas Cook Airlines UK currently has three aircraft based at Glasgow and two at Birmingham.
CAE was awarded a contract to provide an A320 full flight simulator to Lufthansa Flight Training Berlin, representing the 25th simulator Lufthansa Group has ordered from CAE since 1980. According to CAE, the simulator, which is scheduled for installation at the facility in spring 2006, has a list price of C$14 million ($11 million).
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In the future, some observers believe, commercial airlines will continue to offer long-haul services, but some of their passengers will connect with a new generation of microjets operated by private charter companies to complete short-haul legs of their trips. George Khairallah, president of New York-based BusinessJet Class, is prepared for that day. His company has launched a GDS for private aircraft charters.
India's Jet Airways has taken leases on four A330-200s from ILFC for delivery in 2006 and 2007 to complement the three A340-300s it leased from South African Airways that it will use to launch services to London on May 23. Those flights will be operated in a codeshare with United Airlines, with Jet codesharing on United's flights to the US ( ATWOnline, April 29).
Arrow Air installed and implemented Cargo Data Management's hosted browser-based booking, tracking and revenue accounting system Easy Track II under a new five-year contract.
Global ePoint announced that new German charter carrier Blue Wings installed its Cockpit Door Surveillance System to meet regulations that went into effect in April requiring any German-registered aircraft with more than 66 seats to be equipped with a system allowing pilots to observe any party attempting to gain access to the cockpit area and providing surveillance of the forward area of the cabin.
Alitalia Maintenance Systems received approvals from Italian and European aviation authorities ENAC and EASA to perform overhauls on CFM56-5B engines. AMS already services CF6-50s and CF6-80s. Rome Fiumicino-based AMS is a joint venture of Alitalia and Lufthansa Technik, which acquired a 40% share in September 2003.
Discover the World Marketing was selected by Copa Airlines to expand its sales and marketing representation in Canada beginning this month. Discover has been handling the carrier's sales and marketing in Australia and France since March 2004.
US airlines flew 40.31 billion domestic RPMs in February, up 3.2% over the year-ago period, according to the US Dept. of Transportation. Domestic capacity climbed 0.9% to 56.32 billion ASMs and load factor gained 2.9 points to 71.6%. Southwest Airlines carried 6.1 million domestic passengers during the month, the most of any carrier. Delta Air Lines at 6 million and American Airlines at 5.4 million ranked second and third respectively.
EU finance ministers reached an agreement in principle to impose a small levy on air travel to fund development aid that would be voluntary or obligatory depending on the country. However, the controversial proposals for a tax on airline fuel were dropped at the weekend meeting in Luxembourg.
Messier Services Asia implemented a new supply chain management program with Boeing to support Singapore Airlines and other Boeing customers in Asia. Under the new program, Boeing will provide MS Asia with enhanced technical support/certification in servicing Boeing-designed and -manufactured landing gear systems, as well as greater access to available inventory. This in turn will allow MS Asia to reduce repair and overhaul turnaround times for its airline customers.
Onur Air has been banned from flying into or out of the Netherlands and Germany for the next month because of repeated safety lapses. On Thursday, the Dutch Transportation Ministry's Traffic and Waterways Inspection confirmed it was withdrawing the Turkish airline's landing rights with immediate effect until June 12 after an aborted takeoff of a flight from Antalya to Amsterdam Schiphol. Germany's civil aviation authority last week revoked the carrier's permission to take off and land effective immediately, citing unspecified safety concerns.
Lufthansa Systems announced an agreement with Thai Airways International to implement the SAP Aerospace & Defense industry solution to optimize Thai's MRO planning processes.
Sabre announced that it will acquire lastminute.com, an independent online travel and leisure group that operates directly in 14 European countries and participates in three international joint ventures. Under the deal, the acquisition price was set at 165 pence ($3) per lastminute.com share, which values the company at roughly £577 million.
DBA said it made a profit of €1-€2 million ($1.3-$2.6 million) in the 2004-05 business year ended March 31. It had turnover of €265 million and transported 3 million passengers. DBA merged with low-cost airline GEXX earlier this year. For the current year it expects to carry 4.3 million passengers and generate turnover of €400 million. It operates a fleet of 27 737-300s and F100s and offers 125 flights a day.
Sagem and Snecma will be merged after shareholders of the companies approved the measure during their annual meetings. The new company will be called Safran and will be organized into four branches: Aerospace Propulsion, Communications, Aerospace Equipment and Defense-Security. Jean-Paul Bechat is chairman of the executive board, which also includes Gregoire Olivier and Ives Imbert. Mario Colaiacovo is chairman of the supervisory board.
Israel Aircraft Industries and PSF Conversions will convert four 747-400 passenger aircraft to freighters on behalf of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings from late 2007 to mid-2008. The agreement includes an option covering the modification of up to six additional 747-400 passenger aircraft to Special Freighters during the 2009-11 period.
Union representing UPS pilots, which has been negotiating a new contract with management for more than three years, said more than 99% of its members voted to give its five-pilot executive board authority to call a strike. Of the 2,371 that participated in the vote, just 15 voted against it, according to the Independent Pilots Assn. "The overwhelming outcome of this vote is both a show of IPA unity and a clear signal to UPS management that our crewmembers are serious about closing out this contract over the next two weeks in Baltimore," IPA President Tom Nicholson said.
President Bush nominated Edmund Hawley as the next head of the Transportation Security Administration to succeed David M. Stone, who announced last month that he will leave the department in June. Hawley currently serves as a supply chain technology consultant and is a member of FAA's Air Traffic Services Committee. Earlier, he was VP-Transportation Services for the Union Pacific Railroad and served in a senior role at US DOT.
United Airlines' successful termination of its defined benefit pension programs will give it a substantial cost advantage over other hub-and-spoke carriers and could lead to further bankruptcies as those rivals strive to achieve the same level of cost savings, according to Standard & Poor's analyst Philip Baggaley. Absent the terminations, United would have had to make at least $4.5 billion in payments over the next five years, or around $900 million per year, equal to 18% of 2004 labor costs and 5% of total operating costs, Baggaley noted.
